Dämon Märchen
by EulaliaGal
Summary: Shizaya; Fairytale AU. Once upon a time, a demon rose from Hell, shedding his skin and taking on the form of a man. He found his prey in the humans he loved oh so much, who never noticed his eyes. Shizuo Heiwajima did, but he went with the demon anyway.
1. Chapter 1

**Shizaya - Fairytale AU. Once upon a time, a demon rose from hell, shedding his skin and taking on the form of a man. He found his drug in those beautiful human lives; and they never did notice those bloody red eyes that watched them oh so hungrily. Shizuo Heiwajima did, but he went with the demon anyway.**

Okay~ I now have a beta reader, so hopefully this story will be better than ever before! And I apologise sincerely for the lack of chapters - I promise, I promise that the next one will be coming ouy soon!

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『さあさあ 今宵も無礼講

獄卒衆すら巻き込んで

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a risen demon. He was no Demon Prince, fleeing from merciless persecution from his kin and kith due to a spark of compassion in his soul. Oh no, this demon was rotten, right down to his depraved core. He had tortured and murdered and laughed at it all.

He had risen from his Hell, bored with the monotony of his half-life, wishing to get closer to those humans when they were living and breathing, before they became boring, shrieking souls, entreating for redemption and absolution. Meaningless trivial words. How_ dull_ they were!

He kept his own blood-stained, gore-splattered skin long enough, before shedding it amongst the lifeless carcasses. He was not stupid – he knew that the days of terrifying superstitious villagers into fear-induced folly and rampages were numbered. _(Oh, how he loved it when those exquisite humans turned on one of their own! He would stand and watch in broad daylight, giggling at the horror and hilarity of the situation; he could never, ever get enough.)_ After all, humans were stronger and better now _(though to the demon, all that really meant was that men had spawned more monsters of men who played with lives and devastating weapons that massacred thousands)_.

So he changed his form into something humans could trust, and that made it all the more delightful when their hopes were broken and crushed into the dust, beneath his heels, as they wailed at him, cursing and condemning him to Hell, not knowing that Hell was his home. It was so _beautiful_, so _captivating_ in its irony. He delighted in it.

Oh, who was he fooling? He didn't just dip in the sadistic pleasure of devastating human lives, he wallowed in it – _existed_ for it.

He loved it so; he loved it, he loved humans, he loved death. Humans were so interesting, so beautiful; how could he not love them? How couldn't anyone?

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宴の瀬にて成り下がるは

純真無垢故質の悪い

悪虐非道に御座います』

Once upon a time, in a faraway land not too far from the land where the demon lived, a little boy lived with his older brother. The little boy was a prince by name and nature, loved by all in the land, but it was the older brother who caught the demon's eye.

The two brothers were like night and day – the younger was quiet, reserved, beautiful in his frozen, icy demeanour; the elder was fiery, irascible, beautiful in his passionate, spontaneous disposition. Oh, he could be quite the calm one when he wanted to – but Shizuo Heiwajima had a short fuse, and Izaya Orihara was always the one who struck the splint.

Izaya Orihara was the demon's name – not his real one, of course, for in fairy tales names have power. Besides, he had no need for a name when he subsisted in Hell. Another reason why he took his fate in his own hands _(more like tore his destiny from the hands of the Fates, trampling down on their withered hands in the process)_ and rose up to the Mortal Realms; in Hell, he was one amongst thousands in a dog-eat-dog world (Izaya was rather delighted by the irony when he was privileged enough to witness dog-demons tearing away at each other – of course, he had orchestrated the whole thing, and that just made it all _so much better_) – here, on Earth, he was unique.

Of course, not unique in a good way, but Izaya Orihara couldn't care less.

He had first met the two brothers as they stumbled, starving and choking, into his territory _(of course, there were no visible boundaries, no swollen corpses strung up on trees, but everyone knew to keep out of this neck of the woods and the plains beyond; sometimes, just for the fun of it, Izaya would temporarily enlarge his territory into farmland, and watch gleefully as the residents starved to death.)_

He could hear the way the elder kept talking, as if to keep their spirits up and ward away the demons _(shame that the demons were right there beside them, listening and laughing in the splintered light.)_

"C'mon, Kasuka, just a little further – there's nothing wrong with this part of the woods, the adults are just doing it to scare us, you know how they are…" His voice trailed off into nothing as the forest grew eerily silent.

Izaya Orihara cackled at this. He found it so, so amusing that the adults ignored the stories children told them _(about the Boogie Monster, the devils in the shadows, the crocodile under the bed)_, and, in return, the children ignored the stories adults told them _(about mysterious strangers, hands in the shadows, demons in the woods)_. Neither knew that both were telling the truth, and neither bothered to find out.

Overloud, the older boy's voice echoed amongst the trees. "Anyway, if there _is_ a demon, he'll probably be more scared of us than we are of him, right? Kasuka?"

They were young, and foolish. Izaya had been on Earth for millennia, now. Scared of mere mortals? As if.

He loved them. Loved watching them dance, and jerk, and fall.

That's what made him do what he always did. He thought he knew the pattern. Get close to them, make them like you, trust you, love you, and then smash their hopes into the ground, over and over and over again.

But do you know something? Humans are infinitely more complicated than any god _(or demon)_ can comprehend.

They aren't predictable, they aren't mundane; humans are _monsters_, they are total, utter _monsters_, and Izaya – well, he is going to have to learn that, isn't he? He is going to have to learn that over and over again, and he is going to have to open his eyes to the monsters of men.

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Thank you for reading. The greatest gift a reader can give to any author is their feedback and opinions; please do review!


	2. Chapter 2

Ahaha, sorry for not updating in so long! I deleted all of my ideas for the rest of the fic (luckily, I have a hard copy!), so it took some time to write this up again.

I hope this is just as dark and edgy as my last update – and I hope you, as the reader, enjoy reading it as much as I have loved writing it! (Yes, I'm very twisted; writing dark, angsty fics is kinda my forte. But I think I'm good at humour too!)

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片足無くした猫が笑う

ソコ行ク御嬢サン遊ビマショ」

He stepped out of the fractured shadows in the flayed skin of a boy no older than the two before him, smiling a cat's smile _(all fangs and sharp teeth; a smile that spoke of little blind mice blundering into the cat's paws, of gingerbread houses in the woods and of hag-faced witches that ate the forsaken, forgotten children of the cruel, cruel world)_, and said:

"Poor little children, are you lost?"

They looked up, and Izaya Orihara was enthralled.

Oh, these silly little children were nothing special – he was held in the thrall of each and every one of the humans he came across, misbegotten fools as they were. Who cared for world domination and ridding the earth of human scum when he could feed on their hidden fears and their palpable, pulsating emotions, their worthless lives and their earthy, coppery blood!

He loved them, loved their fear and their hate, loved each and every one of the human race.

But oh?

One of the children, black as night and cold as ice, saw him with wide-eyed innocence, through the rose-tinted glass that all humans saw him _(rose tinted from the blood that dripped from Izaya's mouth as he tore through their naïve throats)_; he could feel the curiousity and the antipathy and the_ fear_ radiating from him, as he could for anyone and anybody.

_(For fear crept through the air, coppery and rich and delicious, even when they tried to hide it; it crept through chinks in the locked doors and cracks in the bolted windows.)_

And the other. Brown haired and furious and with a scowl marring his face. How perfectly disgusting!

Izaya hated him on sight. Hated, hated, _hated_ him.

And he knew Shizuo hated him right back.

_(For there was no fear in his expression, no fear in the air around him, no fear in the coppery crimson blood that pumped through his enraged body – just anger and loathing and total, utter hatred. And Izaya couldn't have that now, could he?)_

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首輪に繋がる赤い紐は

片足の代わりになっちゃいない

As far back as Shizuo could remember, he had been special. Unusual. Unique.

Different. _(And being so different in a backwards, standstill world is so, so dangerous, after all.)_

_**Feared.**_

_(For in this land where Death roamed and devils shrieked, superstition stalked the unwary, hands drenched in the blood of innocents.)_

He saw things. Things that should have been left behind with his toys and his cot, left behind with the inevitable approach of adulthood and responsibility. _(Things that only the most innocent and the most guilty saw, things that went bang in the night and ate naughty little children.)_

He saw oh so much. _(Too much, far too much, for any ordinary child to bear; things that would drive a human mad and drag them down to Hell.)_

_(But after all, he was not ordinary, was he? If he was ordinary, like any other child, he would not have to see such sights, would not have to witness the madness of monsters and the madness of men, would not have to snap-snap his father's neck like a rotten tree for the chopping.)_

He saw things no one else did _(though that wasn't true now, was it? Others saw what he saw, and didn't go mad; they holed themselves up in their mundane, __**human**__ world, killing the beast inside and all along nurturing a monster who would torment an unknowing child instead of bring doom down upon their selfish selves)_, and that's all that mattered.

So he kept what he saw to himself, and said nothing to his beloved younger brother. He said nothing about how much he hated this stranger, this stranger who appeared from nowhere and twirled in the shattered light, this stranger with the blood-red eyes and the blood-soaked hands.

_(And he said nothing about the blood he saw clinging to those elegant hands, those graceful hands, those pianist hands which played the broken tune to which all humans danced; he saw the red string attached to the stranger's throat, the string which led all beings home, the string which, he knew oh so well, led straight down to Hell.)_

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These chapters aren't very long, are they? Sumimasen! In that case I'll try to update quicker!


	3. Chapter 3

I actually hadn't planned to have some of this chapter in Kasuka's POV, but then I thought about it and was like, hell, why not. All I can pray for is that Kasuka is kind of in character – after all, we don't see much of him in any of the official materials, do we? (Correct me if I'm wrong!)

I hope you like this newest update, and as usual, please, _please_, review!

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や や や や 嫌 嫌 嫌

This boy scared him.

Kasuka was not one easily scared, but this boy scared him.

This boy, with his smiling eyes and his smiling lips, with his pianist hands and his murderer's hands, this boy with his wanton delight and lustful hunger.

This boy who knew how Kasuka was scared, and revelled in the knowledge.

He danced forward, out of the half-light_ (and the half-shadow and the half-secrets)_, graceful as only a god _(or a demon)_ could be.

Kasuka felt his brother stiffen beside him, and a tentative _(but not gentle, oh no!) _hand give an almost imperceptible tug at his arm.

He also felt the smile on the stranger's face widen, though he saw no change.

He started moving backwards, away from this (_monster)_.

And then, all of a sudden, this pretty, monochrome boy _(except for those eyes, those fiery, crimson eyes)_ leapt forwards into Kasuka's personal space, and he found he could move back no more.

A hand slammed right next to his head, into the rotten trunk of the tree he was leaned against.

In different conditions, this would have been almost romantic.

_(But such romances only happen in stories and fairytales, to princesses in golden gowns and silver shoes; never to pauper boys in tatters and rags, wrapped up in memories of fire and fathers.)_

A tongue flicked out to meet frozen lips. The boy's hair tickled Kasuka's cheek.

"_My…__**pretty**__."_

A cold, white hand took Kasuka's face, tilting it upwards so the stranger could see him better.

Kasuka looked up _(into eyes as red as blood and skin as white as snow and hair as black as the raven's night)_, and saw a challenge.

But not to him, oh no. He knew he was nothing to this smiling, twirling, stranger.

_(This boy wanted his brother, his beautiful, fiery, __**human**__ brother.)_

Then cold _(dead) _skin met his lips, and the cold _(dead) _mask Kasuka had always worn dropped and shattered.

–_Idon'twantthisIdon'twantthis__**Idon'twantthis**__ – _

_(This boy was kissing him, and it was terrible and disgusting and repellent and yet – _

–_and yet –_

–_he wanted this. He wanted this so, so much. He wanted this, not caring that he was young and human and totally, utterly terrified._

_He wanted this.)_

Sharp fangs _(cat fangs, bat fangs, vampire fangs)_ pierced his lower lip.

_IthurtIthurt__**Ithurt**__ – _

The coppery tang of blood flooded his mouth, worming its way down his throat as maggots are wont to do.

He gagged.

_(This was the taste of fear, the taste of fear and desire and humanity and fire.)_

And the stranger leaned back, smiling, and said nothing.

_(And the stranger leaned back, smiling, and asked him,_

"_Do you like that? Do you? Do you?")_

His eyes were not on Kasuka, but on Shizuo; he had forgotten Kasuka as fast as he had played him.

_(Like a child with a new toy, like a man with a new mistress, like a monster with a new life.)_

Kasuka was relieved. He did not care for such overwhelming, otherworldly attention _(and yet he did)_; did not care for such a beautiful, terrifying boy _(and yet he did)_; did not care for such terrible, heart-stopping desire _(and yet he did)_.

And in his haste to deny, he did not notice the way his brother plucked the twig from his lips, did not notice the way his brother crushed the twig beneath his foot, did not notice the way his brother launched himself flying at this pretty, terrifying stranger.

Did not notice the way the beautiful stranger laughed as his brother attacked him, did not notice the way shapes flickered and flames guttered as horns and wings and fangs grew like crooked plants in the twisted forest.

Kasuka did not notice anything, for that was the only way to shut out the _(cruel, cold) _outside world.

_(To keep the monsters away.)_

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We-ell… How was that? Terrible? Brilliant? Okay? Please drop me a line and tell me! I'd love to hear whatever you say.

By the way, the bit where Shizuo has that twig in his mouth? He has an oral fixation. It keeps a lid on his strength, and that's why he always crushes his cigarette when he fights. So I'm guessing that in a situation like this, he'd use anything vaguely stick-like as a replacement. No, that's not supposed to be an innuendo.

…At least, that's my interpretation. I dunno, really.

Please review! Arigato Gozaimasu!


	4. Chapter 4

I am so sorry. It's been a long time; it's been rather busy. Family issues, Stats projects, Geography projects, IT submissions...

Anyhow, please do read and enjoy! (And, if possible, review too? X3) Many thanks to my beta reader, **.Usagi.**

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列成す卒塔婆の群れが歌う

「ソ\コ行ク御嬢サン踊リマショ」

Izaya ran his tongue over his teeth, savouring the heady tang of blood. Oh, it made him _swoon!_

_So…delectable. _

_(Oh, how he loved the thrilling taste of fear, the pungent stench of flesh! How it excited him, made his heart beat so!)_

How long had it been since he last licked blood off his lips? Too long, indeed. _(Too long since he had last torn a human apart from the inside out, too long since he had last risen from a good meal, too long since he had last savoured the blood and the tears, dripping, trailing, from his blood-stained mouth.) _He had almost forgotten that beautiful, nuanced flavour.

It all came back to him now. _Oh_, the _ecstasy!_ This _wonderful_, _terrible_ blood that smouldered in his mouth and slithered down his throat!_ Now_ he remembered why he used to thirst for it so.

And yet… There was something. Something bitter, there in the back of his throat. Something twisted, something raging, something baying for blood… _(Something beautiful, something tempestuous, something crying for love…)_

_Anger_. Fiery, _burning_, anger.

It was anger, wasn't it? He was so sure it was anger. _(Or maybe – passion. For love and hate are so closely bound together, are they not, my pretty fools?)_

How petty, how stupid of him. What for? He had blood, he had victims, he had all the props he needed to perform that one last vanishing trick of their _miserable_, _worthless_, little lives. Why bother with that one _silly_ little boy who knew not fear?

Oh. Oh, _yes_.

That's why, wasn't it? That's why he kissed that foolish _(broken)_ little boy _(toy)_, bit his lip and broke his heart. Not for the boy, but for his _brother_.

For Izaya wanted to _see_, wanted to _watch_, wanted to know what he would do, what he would feel, what would make him shatter into thousands of little gleaming shards. _(Izaya always liked the spirited toys best. They were so much _fun_ to break; why would he ever bother with anything else?)_

He wanted to see those disgusting eyes fill with tears, those disgusting lips tear open in vain, that disgusting soul _crushed_ and _ruined_ and _broken_, never to see the light of day again.

He wanted a living, dying, shell, straddling the twilight gloom. He would settle with nothing less; not for this one. This one who had such _fire_ in his eyes; such a will to live, such a wish to protect_ (to devour)._

_(For he would always consume the ones he wished to protect – such is the fate of the strong; to prey upon the weak and rise dripping with their blood.)_

How _delightful_ it would be to break this boy, to smash-shatter-crush his dreams; to watch him writhe in the dust from whence he came. That would be such a fitting punishment for the boy who knew not fear _(and the boy who knew not love)_. Punishment before crime, hatred before love; he _would_ teach this silly little boy to fear him. It was a lesson they all had to learn, someday _(and Izaya was only teaching it to the little prodigal sooner rather than later – for God was not as forgive as the Devil, and once you fell, you never got up.)_

There was no doubt that Izaya would break the boy, like all those foolish puppets before him. Izaya would string him up and make him dance; play the tune and manipulate his movements. _(And then he would cut the strings, watching as the boy shuddered and jerked and quivered, and laughing all the while.)_ Izaya knew humans, after all; knew them like he knew himself.

_(But…truly, he knew nothing about himself, and nothing about humans. For love and loss had not yet stolen away his putrid heart, and those are what makes humans human, after all.)_

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Once again, thank you very much for waiting for me; and please do review!

Oh, and a little question: What do you think I should name these chapters? I just don't think Chapter 1, Chapter 2 etc. fits the bill...


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